There’s a sense of quiet about
there’s no planes going overhead.
There’s a fear in the air where people are
afraid of catching the virus,
they’re afraid of how
they’re going to survive now.
It makes me feel so worried.
I think,
the scale of it.
Um,
I guess it’s
it’s basically the collapse of
all human systems.
We are in
‘lockdown’
and I’m not supposed to leave my house
for the foreseeable future.
I thought I would’ve fallen out with
someone by now.
We have to remind ourselves
that there’s actually
like a global pandemic happening
and people aren’t following the instructions.
Believe me I’m so stressed.
Each time somebody get in my car
I was thinking like,
“Yeah, maybe this person has it?”.
Since last week I didn’t even work
one day because people might have the virus.
As a human being you need
to think about others as well.
I’ve never thought of myself as an older person.
I’m probably a lot more vulnerable
than a lot of people.
Mummy
and daddy
they’re our teachers.
Explain something to Adi,
look after Elia,
make lunch,
just be on top of all of that
is...
I’ve been finding it difficult,
I’ve been losing my patience.
It’s been
really tiring.
You look out the window and nothing much
has really changed.
There’s still people driving around here,
it still feels quite busy.
I think a lot of people are in denial still.
Even though
the restrictions have been ramped up.
Every day I’m kind of just watching, thinking,
“How can they have let this happen?”
You know,
how can the health minister sit there
and tell us the NHS is alright
and then the workers are saying
that they don’t have the equipment?
You know, it doesn’t make any sense.
Everything is so unprecedented.
It feels as if they’re working out what to do
as they go along.
There were too many
not even just confirmed cases but deaths
before anybody did anything.
The country my family’s from
is tiny so they’ve not had
any confirmed cases
but they’ve kind of like shutdown at the moment.
I don’t want any negativity.
I don’t want to start thinking like,
“Oh, how can they do this?”
or, “What are they doing?”
It’s like, a pandemic.
It’s so tough to know what to do.
Everyone’s got to help in their
own way I think.
We’ve got to be grateful for the NHS
and all those people out there who [are] actually
helping us get through this.
Wednesday
I think I cried
approximately like eight times.
I had really bad chest pains
but I’d had it before last year.
The doctor was like,
“Hmm, it’s, like, you’re anxious.”
If you can’t be stressed out during a global pandemic
when can you be stressed out?
Already we have a crisis of
mental health in this country
and what’s happened over recent weeks
is obviously exacerbating that problem.
What’s encouraging
is, you know, the amount of
community spirit that we’re seeing out of this.
I kind of feel that as humans
we’ve got a really good kind of trait,
which is adjusting to situations.
I’ve never been a phone type of person
but I’ve been
video calling my friends
for like this entire time.
It does help a lot
it makes you forget that you’re in your house by force.
It makes me feel really happy.
Because then it’s like
it’s like you’re kind of with your friends.
OK
Hey friends
how are you?
I wanna say I’m fine but my chest hurts.
My heart feels almost broken
I suppose it’s good we’re stuck inside
because my legs feel heavy.
So does my head.
I reckon it’s fair to say I’m struggling.
How are you though?
We always talk about time as though
it’s something we cannot control
and look at us now.
I have it and I’m still lost.
Have you seen the weather?
Wild how the sun always appears brighter
the further you are away from it.
You know,
I’ve started pacing again.
It’s sometimes the only way I know I exist.
How are you passing the minutes?
Or hours?
Days...
Me, smoking again
not reading
beating myself up about the things I have
the capacity to change
but usually
work helps me break those habits up
but now
it feels like
I’m the only one that’s doing the breaking.